Consider Pat McAfee one of those impressed by the NFL debut of Stetson Bennett over the weekend.
The former NFL punter turned media star took some time to praise Bennett during his weekly show. Bennett finished Saturday’s game completing 17-of-29 passes for 191 yards with a touchdown, along with no interceptions in his NFL preseason debut.
“Stetson, awesome. … Yeah, but remember, ‘He’s too old,’ and he partied his face off that time in Texas, and he got arrested and he came out with a big old lipper in I think, walking out of the jail, in the middle of the Combine process. So that’s going to be a red flag for some teams, and we can understand that. That being said, he was doing a lot of this s— in Georgia. Just was five years older than everybody, so nobody knew if it was impressive or not,” McAfee said. “And then he comes into the NFL, first game and he’s dicing up a defense that has an NFL jersey on. … Teammates love him. … Look how f—ing comfortable this guy is. Was this guy playing Big 12 football right there? It looked like Big 12 football.”
That’s high praise for a quarterback who didn’t seem to have much of an NFL future while suiting up in Athens. Now, Bennett looks like he’s on the right track, to at least be a serviceable backup in the league.
Moreover, Bennett’s coach in Los Angeles, Sean McVay, took away more positives than negatives regarding Bennett’s play, just like McAfee.
“I thought he did a nice job,” McVay told reporters, per ESPN. “There were some tough situations there, and you could see the athleticism where he escaped.”
Bennett’s best possession of the day came in his first drive. He orchestrated a 16-play, 75-yard drive that got the Rams into the end zone for the first time in the game.
“In that scoring drive, he was able to get into a rhythm,” McVay said. “I thought he did a nice job of being able to exhaust some of his progressions. … You could see that it was a step in the right direction.”
The Rams still have two preseason games remaining on the schedule. They’ll host the Las Vegas Raiders on Saturday, Aug. 19 before closing out the preseason on the road against the Denver Broncos on Saturday, Aug. 26.
Moving forward, it’ll be fun to see Stetson Bennett continue to compete, and we’ll see if he can have a repeat performance over the next month.
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